Association for Behavior Analysis International

While the support needs of many individuals with Autism and/or Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities do not change with the expiration of their educational entitlement at age 21, the transition from the school-age educational system to the realm of adult services often involves a significant reduction in the availability of high-quality support services. There are many factors that contribute to the lack of availability of high-quality programs and services for adults with ASD/IDD. Some of these factors include a lack of funding, transportation, opportunities for community-based employment & recreation, training, provider agencies, and highly qualified staff. There continues to be a dire need for additional research focused on the identification and validation of effective strategies for encouraging desirable outcomes among adults with ASD/IDD despite the limited resources that are commonplace in the adult services field. The current symposium addresses this need by exploring practical strategies for functional assessment and the design and implementation of effective support services despite the general lack of resources that commonly exist within adult-focused service delivery agencies.

Practitioners and researchers interested in the identification, validation, and implementation of evidence-based practices for supporting adults with autism and/or IDD across settings and contexts.

Telehealth uses electronic information and telecommunication technologies to support long-distance clinical services. It has successfully been used by medical professionals to deliver services to patients and by clinical professionals to teach family and staff members to provide evidence-based practices. There is no research to date, however, evaluating the use of telehealth to teach individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thus, we evaluated the efficacy of a telehealth intervention using total task chaining with least-to-most prompting delivered via videoconference to two adults with IDD. Each participant selected three recreational, independent living, or vocational skills to learn. Both participants demonstrated low independent responding during baseline with enhanced written instructions present. During intervention, which included verbal and model prompting, both participants met the mastery criterion for each skill in fewer than 15 sessions. In addition, both participants performed all skills at the same mastery level in 2-week follow-ups. Finally, both participants expressed satisfaction with the goals, procedures, and effects of the intervention. We discuss the broader scope of the intervention to individuals with disabilities for whom face-to-face services may not be feasible.

The purpose of this study is to compare pictorial preference assessments (PPA) to video-based preference (VPA) assessments to identify preferred activities. Additionally, we compared the effects of these assessments when activities were and were not presented. Participants were two adults with ASD who participated in a university-based employment support program. Multiple preference assessments were conducted in the following sequence: (a) VPA with 5-min access to the activity, (b) VPA with no access following a selection, (c) PPA with 5-min access to the activity, and (d) PPA with no access. Spearman rank order correlation coefficients were calculated to compare the results of VPA to that of the PPA. Preliminary results of the VPA with and without access to activities identified a Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.51 and 0.68, representing a strong positive correlation between each assessment type. These data support previous research indicating access to an activity following a selection may be unnecessary (Clark et al., 2015; Brodhead et al., 2017). This study will benefit individuals with ASD by identifying a viable method of reinforcer identification for community-based activities.